Purging the police
A mass mischief undone in UPBy
sacking 6,500 policemen recruited in UP between 2004 and 2006 with the help of “forged” documents and recommending the suspension of 12 senior police officers involved in this major job scam, Chief Minister Mayawati has once again brought into sharp focus the issue of patronage and corruption in government departments.

Water woes
Conserve it for a safe futurePrime Minister
Manmohan Singh has said that the government cannot subsidise the commercial use of water and suggested incentives and penalties for water conservation. Concerns over the fast depletion of water resources have often been expressed, but nothing concrete has happened at the ground level.

Hyderabad’s shame
Flyover collapse a blot on engineersThe
collapse of a portion of the flyover under construction in the busy Punjagutta area of Hyderabad on Sunday evening raises serious questions about the engineers’ professional competence and the quality of the material used in the work. The collapsed portion of the scaffolding extending to about 20 feet and five blocks, each weighing hundreds of
tonnes, fell over vehicles passing underneath.

Share market realitySmall investors can’t be gainers
by Arun KumarThe stock market in India has been going through a roller coaster. After rising sharply for a few months and reaching a peak on July 24
(Sensex touched 15,869), it started fluctuating. It dropped sharply on July 27 (542 points), August 1(615 points) and then on August 16 (643 points). These have been the biggest falls, but there have been others like on August 21, 2007 (438 points).

The survivors
by B.K. KarkraDuring
my service in the armed forces, I served as many as eight tenures in our North-East. In fact, that was the place where action was all those years.Every state of the region has its own identity and character. Among these, Nagaland fascinated me the most. The Nagas are a brave, hardy and principled people.

A harvest of devastationDeath and deprivation stalk West Bengal’s tea gardens
by Usha RaiOver
8000 families have been affected by the closure of 14 tea gardens in Jalpaiguri District of West Bengal. The worst affected are women and children. Starvation deaths are being reported and children have dropped out of school. The number of malnourished infants is on the increase and from the closed tea gardens it is difficult to access the
anganwadies, several kilometers away, where basic nutrition is provided under the Integrated Child Development Scheme
(ICDS.)

The parrot that was no bird-brain
by Andrew GumbelAlex
the parrot could do a lot of things. He could count to six, and was working on counting to seven. He could name 50 objects, seven colours and five shapes. Scientists who kept him in a lab at Brandeis University near Boston, said he had the emotional maturity of a two-year-old child – they meant that as a compliment – and the intellectual capabilities of a five-year-old. He was, in short, no bird-brain.

Legal Notes
SC continues to face shortage of judges
by S.S. NegiDue
to the cumbersome procedure of appointment of Supreme Court judges, the top court of the country continues to face shortage of judges. It is currently working with a strength of 22 judges against the sanctioned posts of 26, with the situation set to be aggravated further with six judges due for retirement between January and November next year. Since the selection and appointment process takes an abnormally long time, it is unlikely that all the 26 posts will be filled by November 10, 2008, when Justice Tarun
Chatterjee, the last in the list of six retiring judges, relinquishes office.

By
sacking 6,500 policemen recruited in UP between 2004 and 2006 with the help of “forged” documents and recommending the suspension of 12 senior police officers involved in this major job scam, Chief Minister Mayawati has once again brought into sharp focus the issue of patronage and corruption in government departments. It is true that her decision is a big blow to her predecessor Mulayam Singh Yadav, as a substantial number of these policemen belong to the districts like Etawah, Mainpuri and Kannauj, the strongholds of the Samajwadi Party leader. He should be ready for more shocks as the inquiry committee set up by the BSP government to look into the police recruitments during Mr Yadav’s tenure has submitted its report about only 14 of the 55 boards constituted for the purpose. It may be hard for the SP leader to defend the recruitments.

Forging documents relating to the recruits’ educational qualifications, medical fitness, Scheduled Caste status, etc, cannot be justified. Reports suggest that by and large people are happy with what the Mayawati government has done on this account. Even if the exercise to undo what the Mulayam Singh government did appears to be connected with Ms Mayawati’s vendetta politics, no one can really object to it if the intention is to expose corruption and punish the guilty.

The police department is well known for corruption at every stage, including the recruitment of its personnel, not only in UP but in other states like Punjab and Haryana also. There are rates fixed for getting even a constable’s job. But this is possible because of even senior IPS officers these days are ready to function as “yes men” of political masters. If officers are upright and have the guts to say “no” to politicians, who want to use them for their narrow ends, corruption in the government departments can be given a burial. The Mayawati government is going to set up a committee to review the recruitment system in UP and suggest measures to make it fair and transparent. A truly transparent recruitment process can definitely help prevent corruption. But it remains to be seen what she actually does to have a corruption-free recruitment system as she claims. Ms Mayawati will also have to ensure that she as well as her partymen do not launch their own recruitment drive of the wrong kind.

Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh has said that the government cannot subsidise the commercial use of water and suggested incentives and penalties for water conservation. Concerns over the fast depletion of water resources have often been expressed, but nothing concrete has happened at the ground level. The Centre has circulated among the states a draft water Bill which intends to impose a levy on the use of water for commercial purposes. Why should companies making beverages get water almost free of cost? The Union Territory of Chandigarh and 10 states, including Himachal Pradesh and Bihar, have agreed to adopt the Central Bill and enact the law.

However, Punjab, where the water table has gone down to alarming levels, has not shown any interest in the Bill. The state government not only ignores the over-exploitation of ground water, but also encourages the misuse of water for irrigation by supplying free electricity to farmers. Although the Prime Minister has frequently spoken against such populist policies prevalent in Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, his government has not been able to enforce any policy of incentives and penalties to rein in the erring states. The short-sighted political leadership in the states will not listen to any such advice unless it is held accountable for the deterioration of water and power resources.

If the state governments fail to initiate steps to conserve water, the municipalities, panchayats, NGOs and public-spirited citizens should take up the responsibility in their own interest. There is an urgent need to avoid water wastage, make an efficient use of water, check the contamination of ground water due to the excessive use of chemicals, put up rainwater harvesting structures and revive village ponds and other water bodies to replenish ground water. People in general and farmers in particular should realise that if water resources are not protected and recharged, the coming generations will blame the present generation.

The
collapse of a portion of the flyover under construction in the busy Punjagutta area of Hyderabad on Sunday evening raises serious questions about the engineers’ professional competence and the quality of the material used in the work. The collapsed portion of the scaffolding extending to about 20 feet and five blocks, each weighing hundreds of tonnes, fell over vehicles passing underneath. There are conflicting reports on the casualties. But a major tragedy was averted because a city bus had passed by only a few seconds before the incident. The fact that the flyover was being built with the latest technology of pre-stressed concrete moulds proves that there are gray areas even in this sophisticated method of construction. Experts in structural engineering need to explore ways to make the construction of flyovers safe and foolproof, especially because their importance has increased considerably in recent times to ease congestion in big cities.

This flyover, hailed as a showpiece of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, had been under construction since September 2005. As it was due for inauguration in December, the engineers should have reviewed its safety aspect carefully and thoroughly. The state government has suspended three engineers for the collapse. But it should not end as a farce like the Muslim Jung bridge probe. Following the detection of cracks in this bridge over the Musi river in Hyderabad a few days before it was open to traffic, the Rajasekhara Reddy government ordered a probe. Subsequently, it had absolved all the supervising engineers and revoked their suspensions.

The latest incident calls for thorough investigation. If it is a case of design fault, it must be rectified. Accountability must be fixed on the supervising engineers, contractors and the executing companies for dereliction of duty. The collapse of bridges has become too common these days. Consider how many of them collapsed in Himachal Pradesh alone. Even railway tunnels are not safe. The Udhampur-Kashmir valley railway line has been affected following the collapse of the tunnel near Udhampur as also seepage in three other tunnels beyond Katra. The authorities would do well to dispel the doubts about the design of these tunnels and bridges in public interest.

The stock market in India has been going through a roller coaster. After rising sharply for a few months and reaching a peak on July 24 (Sensex touched 15,869), it started fluctuating. It dropped sharply on July 27 (542 points), August 1(615 points) and then on August 16 (643 points). These have been the biggest falls, but there have been others like on August 21, 2007 (438 points). The investor is breathless not knowing which way to go. Some like the SEBI chief have argued that there is nothing to worry about, or the Finance Minister has reiterated that the economy is doing well. The investor is sought to be convinced that the fundamentals of the economy are good and that there is no need to panic.

It is clear that the crisis has hit suddenly, something even the Finance Minister or the RBI were not able to anticipate. The RBI report in July made no mention of any such possibility. If those with all the economic intelligence at their command could not anticipate the coming events, can the investor do better? All this is reminiscent of the occurrences during the last 16 years when many have lost heavily. Can the assurance that the fundamentals are good be believed? Two important points need to be kept in mind.

First, the stock market is not always directly linked to the fundamentals of the economy. If it was, with the fundamentals being good, as the Finance Minister and experts say, why the repeated sharp fall? Compared to the July 24 peak on August 21, 2007, it was down by 12 per cent. Now it is recovering.

The stock market is essentially based on short-term expectations. Some expect it to rise and buy to make a gain (the bulls) while others expect it to fall so they sell to make a profit (the bears). At any given time, there are bulls and bears operating to keep the market in equilibrium. If no one is buying (no bulls), the market would collapse as it happened on the manic Monday last year. If there are no sellers (no bears) the market would rise sharply. Further, a bull in the morning may be a bear in the afternoon. The positions keep switching because of the changing expectations. If the market has risen sharply, some begin to expect it to fall and turn bearish and vice versa.

Short-term factors like a CBDT circular, the news of FIIs withdrawing or political instability influence the markets. Long-term features of the economy and politics also have a bearing, but these signals are read in the immediate context and often there are over-reactions. For instance, the likely effect of reservations on the corporate sector or whether the Left Front is going to push the UPA government harder in the context of the nuclear deal.

What role do the economic fundamentals play? The stock market reflects the health of the corporate sector, but they constitute 30 per cent of the output of the economy. Indirectly, this may also reflect the health of the overall economy but often not. Till July 24, when the market rose sharply, it was unaffected by the growing social unrest in the country, increasing criminalisation, rising unemployment or the farmers committing suicide. Currently, the declines are due to the failure of the sub-prime loans market in the US which has little to do directly with the Indian economy or its fundamentals.

Even if the fundamentals are important, there is no particular level of the stock market indices that is commensurate with a given level of the fundamentals. There is no one-to-one correspondence between the two. The Harshad Mehta induced boom in 1992 was coterminus with a sharp decline in the rate of growth of the economy. Similar was the case during the Ketan Parikh-induced boom. Yes, the economy has grown at about 8 per cent during the last three years. Does that justify a 250 per cent rise in the stock market indices? The corporate sector profits have risen sharply by about 30 per cent, but even that does not justify the rise.

In effect, the sharp rise in the indices has meant that the market has been going out of sync with the reality. Consequently, average returns on the stocks have been falling. Why do the investors still invest? Because of the expected capital gains. In a bull market, it is the expected capital gain that drives investments. This is an unstable situation. If the rise of the market slows down, the rate of return falls and the investors start turning into bears. The market tends to go into the reverse gear. The big players with their analysts control over chunks of stocks and associations with brokers are able to see the signs and retrieve some of their positions. Usually in a boom, greed brings in small investors and they are the ones who suffer the losses when the market falls.

The market mostly consists of the big fish. According to published data, in 2004-05 only 1,40,000 individuals bought shares worth more than Rs 1 lakh - a mere 0.00001 per cent of the population. Public holding of the shares of the stock markets is hardly a few per cent. Over 80 per cent is held by big investors. Thus, small investors are marginal to the market and they tend to get locked in. The losses for big investors are mostly on paper. The higher valuation during the boom reverses when the market falls, but the original capital is usually intact and they periodically book profits.

The second issue is that in times of turbulence, no one is able to predict the market, given the uncertainty, the manipulations by the big investors and insider trading. In the case of the sub-prime market collapse, the US Federal Bank was also caught off guard. After the event, many now argue that the bomb was ticking but few predicted it, certainly not the Federal Bank. Indian markets are getting affected because some FIIs are withdrawing money to shore up their US operations, which are more important for them. In this situation where do the fundamentals of the Indian economy enter the picture?

In most situations of decline of the stock markets even the Finance Ministry cannot predict what will happen (otherwise it would take corrective steps). What it usually does is to put pressure on financial institutions, like public sector banks and insurance companies, to support the market to prevent a drastic fall. No wonder, the public financial institutions suffer in the process (as it happened earlier with the UTI which collapsed). This may be taking place now also.

This is the key to the problem of the Indian small investors. Today, the government’s economic performance is judged by the rise in the stock markets. The ministry has signalled to the operators that they can be bulls without worry since the ministry would send signals to the right places to support the market if it falls. The ministry has been favouring the market by diluting capital gains tax and eliminating the dividend and wealth taxes. But these are precisely the instruments that used to keep speculative activity in check. In their absence, boom and bust are bound to be aggravated. To be successful, one has to predict what the majority will do --- know the minds of the FIIs and those indulging in insider trading. No small investor with a little bit of savings can easily do this; so the stock market is not for them.

What the government does not seem to factor in is that the speculative activity in the stock market affects other investments adversely. We need investments in agriculture, small-scale industry and physical infrastructure, but if one can make money in the short run then why invest in the real economy and get a return much later? A steady market is better all around than a volatile one, but the present policies are the antithesis of this.

In brief, the US sub-prime market, liquidity problems and the political turmoil due to the Congress -Left disagreement on the nuclear issue are important to explain the stock market instability, but the reality check is the speculation induced by policy makers to gain brownie points with finance
capital.

During
my service in the armed forces, I served as many as eight tenures in our North-East. In fact, that was the place where action was all those years.

Every state of the region has its own identity and character. Among these, Nagaland fascinated me the most. The Nagas are a brave, hardy and principled people. During the active phase of the insurgency there, the armed forces suffered quite a few ambushes at their hands. But Nagas would never attack women and children.

Most of them have turned Christians. So, they would also not go for ambushes on Sundays. They were otherwise very daring. If any of us acted funny with their women, they would put him on notice. Those who took their warning lightly often got liquidated.

In 1972, I was posted in 36th Battalion C.R.P. Force deployed in the Chakesang region which was then the epicentre of insurgency in Nagaland. The unit was led by an excellent Commanding Officer, Mr Indra Singh, who also followed the rules of the game like the Nagas and was compassionate to the core. He captured a self-styled Major-General of the Naga underground army who was then well above Muivah and Isaac Swu in the Naga underground hierarchy. (We understandably referred to all officers of the Naga underground set-up as self-styled).

The prisoner was thoroughly interrogated, but never ill-treated. In fact, our kind-hearted Commandant gave him his own quilt to make his stay comfortable in the prisoners’ cell of our quarter-guard.

The Naga underground officials had a special fondness for issuing written orders. This often landed them in trouble with us. After a few months of the capture of their S.S. Major- General, we were able to lay hands on one S.S. Colonel Punuro. He had in his pocket a leave-certificate freshly signed by his superior who was none other then Mr Isaac Swu (then a S.S. Brigadier). We immediately went after this high-profile insurgent, but he narrowly escaped.

I returned to Nagaland in 1976 as Commandant of the 51st Battalion C.R.P. Force. The unit was then attached to an Infantry Brigade commanded by Brigadier A.K. Chatterjee who went on to become the G.O.C-in-C of the Southern Command during our operations in Sri Lanka. Muivah and Isaac Swu were still around hiding in the jungles of Myanmar.

Quite a few important functionaries of the Naga underground outfit had, however, since joined the national mainstream and settled down to a peaceful life. I contacted one such senior leader and was able to persuade him to write a letter to Muivah to settle for peace. He and Swu, however, persisted with their rebellious ways for many more years.

Over these years, these rare survivors of the counter-insurgency operations rose quite high in stature and are now negotiating peace with the Government of India on tough terms. But, once out of jungles, you rarely go back there. So, we can hopefully bid goodbye to insurgency in
Nagaland.

A harvest of devastationDeath and deprivation stalk West Bengal’s tea gardens
by Usha Rai

Over
8000 families have been affected by the closure of 14 tea gardens in Jalpaiguri District of West Bengal. The worst affected are women and children. Starvation deaths are being reported and children have dropped out of school. The number of malnourished infants is on the increase and from the closed tea gardens it is difficult to access the anganwadies, several kilometers away, where basic nutrition is provided under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS.)

A high-level team with Member, Planning Commission Dr Syeda Hameed, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Women, Mrs Krishna Tirath, Dr Mohini Giri, President of the Guild of Service, Dr Malini Bhattacharya, National Commission for Women, Mrs Sandhya Bajaj, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Ms Pam Rajput, Women’s Resource and Advocacy Centre, Chandigarh, and other activists, visited three of the closed tea gardens, participated in public hearings, met affected people and panchayat leaders from June 25 to 28. They also met Mr Ramesh Jairam, Minister of State for Commerce who was visiting the tea gardens with a package of Rs 4650 crores for reopening closed ones and rejuvenating the sick ones.

While 14 tea gardens have been closed, 40 are sick and in need of resuscitation. Since a majority of the workers in the tea gardens are women they are bearing the brunt of the declining status and closure of the gardens. While in several closed gardens, Operational Management Committees (OMCs), quickly put together by the workers and facilitated by the DM, are plucking tea leaves, selling them and sharing the returns with the regular workers who were on the muster of the tea gardens.

But the bigha or temporary workers have been left out. There is no power supply to the closed tea gardens and the supply to the sick units is irregular. Without power, the tea garden workers have not been able to draw water from the deep tube wells – so there is a perennial shortage of water in the closed tea gardens.

The visit of the fact finding team was facilitated by the National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) and the Save the Gardens, Save Workers Campaign Against Hunger, a people’s initiative for protection of food security, fundamental rights and rehabilitation of sick and starving tea garden workers of West Bengal. Mrs Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury, Chairperson of the Institute for Gender Justice and advisor, NLSA, and a member of the fact finding team, had done the preliminary report on the situation in the tea gardens.

Malaria, snake bite and diarrohea have devastated the region. This was confirmed by the medical health officers interviewed as well as the district magistrate of Jalpaiguri, Mr S Ranjit. On the lack of power in the region, Mr Ranjit as well as local MLA Somra Lakra confirmed that tea garden owners had piled up power bills and run away without settling them. Till these bills are settled, he said, it would be difficult to provide electricity.

Even a tea garden functioning for 70 years is without electricity. The owner said he would give bulk connections and deduct a fixed amount from the workers wages. The power deductions, it was found, was higher than most workers could afford. Now individual connections are being considered but for that the villagers have to give a deposit first.

When maurauding wild elephants from adjoining forest areas attack the tea garden, foraging for ripe jack fruits and other edible food, the dark nights are eerie and uncertain. There are umpteen reports of men, women and children being killed by elephants and families running in circles for reprieve. The team visited Laxmi Murmu and Rita Bora at Ranichera and Nageshwari, two functioning tea garden workers, whose husbands were killed in June by elephants.

Both gardens had no electricity and the women were terrified for their security. Laxmi, just 21 and mother of a one year old infant and another of four, was living in a broken, thatched hut, unsure of where her next meal would come from. When the elephant attacked she ran away with her two children but her husband could not. He was picked up, thrown and trampled by the elephant. Though she had got compensation of Rs 25,000 from the forest department, the money was in the custody of a money lender till a bank account could be opened in her name. Rita Bora, the other widow in her mid-forties, has to bring up five children.

The members visited the closed tea gardens of Kathalpura, Dheklapara and Ramjhora and had extensive interaction with families of affected workers. Everywhere there was one demand-open the tea gardens, we want to earn our wages and not live on doles. The 99- year lease of the tea garden land has expired and the owners have walked out. Even the provident fund and gratuity ranging from Rs 2.5 crores in some cases to Rs 7 crores in others had not been deposited.

The situation at Dheklapara, a tea estate that has been closed since 2000, was particularly bad. There are two rivers that run on either side of Dheklapara and in the monsoons when the rivers are in spate, it becomes an island cut off from the rest of the world. Jagdish Munda of Dheklapara said for two years now requests are being made to the zilla parishad for a bund on rivers but there has been no response.

Young girls and boys are leaving the area. Agents come and take them away promising them jobs, the residents said. Amit and two young girls were allegedly taken to Delhi in 2003 and have not returned. According to local activists who have been working in the area some 200 girls are missing from the region.

There are three deaf and dumb children in this small population and several children have died due to malnourishment. Going to school has become extremely difficult for the children of Dheklapara who have to travel four to 20 kms to reach their school. Students of the Bamandanga (closed) tea estate in Nagrakata block have to travel 18 kms to get to a school. Children from Neponia division of Dheklapara tea estate have to cross two mountain rivers to take their exams in the rainy season. After the tea gardens closed, there are no buses to take them to school and because they cannot afford to pay the bus fare, no one wants to give them a lift. So many children have just dropped out.

In fact a major complaint at every public hearing and closed tea garden was the impact on children’s education. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Education for All are meaningless rhetoric in this part of the world. Some children even had tears in their eyes as they spoke about their ambition for education and the dreams that had been cut short by closure of the gardens.

Some of the dropouts have joined the village rescue and rehabilitation team that saves girls from being trafficked, help people during the floods and in case of elephant attacks, take the injured to the hospital. In fact the team found several such groups working in and around the tea gardens.

Alex
the parrot could do a lot of things. He could count to six, and was working on counting to seven. He could name 50 objects, seven colours and five shapes. Scientists who kept him in a lab at Brandeis University near Boston, said he had the emotional maturity of a two-year-old child – they meant that as a compliment – and the intellectual capabilities of a five-year-old. He was, in short, no bird-brain.

But Alex is no more. The 31-year-old African Grey, one of the great treasures of US scientific research, has joined the squawking choir invisible. Last Thursday, his chief keeper, avian researcher Irene Pepperberg, said goodnight to him as always. “You be good, I love you,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Alex responded: “You’ll be in tomorrow.”

But next morning he was dead in his 2ft by 3ft cage. A veterinarian who cut short her holiday so she could examine him found nothing obviously wrong.

The news was not released immediately because Dr Pepperberg and her fellow researchers needed to absorb the shock and recover enough equanimity to speak publicly about their loss.

Alex’s chief contribution to avian science was to shatter the notion that parrots can only mimic human speech. Over 30 years of research, Dr Pepperberg showed he was capable of understanding and using English on his own initiative. He learnt to use phrases along the lines of, “I want X” or “I wanna go Y”, and clearly meant them to express genuine desires. He grasped the concept of certain categories, including bigger and smaller, or same and different, or present and absent.

Brandeis said in a statement marking his passing: “Alex combined his labels to identify, request, refuse, and categorise more than 100 different items, demonstrating a level and scope of cognitive abilities never expected in an avian species.”

That’s quite an achievement for a bird picked at random from a pet shop in 1977. Dr Pepperberg had trained as a theoretical chemist at Harvard, but became fascinated by advanced forms of communication in animals, be they chimps using sign language, birds singing, or dolphins using sonar.

Gradually, she narrowed her focus to the avian brain and set up a project she called the Avian Learning Experiment, or Alex. So she named her new feathered friend Alex, and started teaching him. She and her research assistants were with him every day, using a method called rival-model technique to spur him to expand his knowledge base little by little. A similar technique has since been used to help children with learning disabilities.

Alex was learning till the end, getting his head around the number seven and forming new words from combinations of sounds he had already mastered. He also enjoyed lording it over two younger African Greys in the lab n 12-year-old Griffin and eight-year-old Arthur n telling them to “talk better” when they mumbled their words. “He was so extraordinary in breaking the perceptions of birds as not being intelligent,” Dr Pepperberg said. “It’s devastating to lose an individual you’ve worked with every day for 30 years.”

Alex’s prowess had its precedents. A century ago, the Cheshire Cheese pub on Fleet Street in London had an eccentric parrot called Polly. On Armistice Night 1918, Polly imitated the popping of champagne corks about 400 times then fainted from exhaustion. When she died in 1926, her obituary appeared in 200 newspapers.

Due
to the cumbersome procedure of appointment of Supreme Court judges, the top court of the country continues to face shortage of judges. It is currently working with a strength of 22 judges against the sanctioned posts of 26, with the situation set to be aggravated further with six judges due for retirement between January and November next year. Since the selection and appointment process takes an abnormally long time, it is unlikely that all the 26 posts will be filled by November 10, 2008, when Justice Tarun Chatterjee, the last in the list of six retiring judges, relinquishes office.

The slow process of appointment is reflected in the fact that despite around four to five vacancies continuing in the Supreme Court for over a year now, and as many as four judges superannuating this year, only three new judges have been appointed so far in 2007. This certainly will seriously hamper the disposal of cases in the apex court itself, which recently witnessed a substantial increase in the pending cases feel legal experts. As per the latest available data, the total number of pending cases in the apex court as on June 30 stood 43,580, which is slightly higher than the March 31 figure of 41,581.

The increase by the Supreme Court Secretariat is mainly attributed to the shortage of judges. Several top lawyers of the country have expressed serious concern over the continued vacancies in the apex court itself and were of the opinion that the Court Administration as well as the government, particularly the Law Ministry, should take prompt action to accelerate the appointment process.

No improvement in backlog

The huge burden of cases with the high courts and the subordinate courts continues to increase at an alarming rate, though the available data on the disposal rate looks quite impressive. As compiled by the Supreme Court Administration for the past one year, the burden of cases in the 21 high courts of the country increased by 1.17 lakh between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2007. The total number of pending cases as on March 31 this year with the high courts was recorded at 36.78 lakh as compared to 35.60 lakh last year.

The increase was recorded despite the high courts disposing 3.73 lakh cases during the period. Similarly in the lower courts, the number of pending cases had registered an increase of 8.76 lakh cases and the total number stood at a phenomenal figure of 2.49 crore in spite of 38.97 lakh disposals.

The apex court administration cited lack of infrastructure support as the main reason for increase in the pendency both in high courts and lower courts, despite the best efforts being put up by the judiciary. Low litigant-judge ratio, inadequate number of courts and around 142 vacant posts of high court judges and over 2,700 vacancies in lower court were cited as the other major factors contributing to it.

Judicial training

In its efforts to improve upon the justice delivery system and make it suitable to fast-changing needs, the National Judicial Academy (NJA) in recent times has taken several initiatives, including running refresher courses to judicial officers. The academy started with a special training programme for District Judges, considered as the backbone of the judicial administration in subordinate courts, and Registrars-General of High Courts.

Thirty-nine of them were called to a training on latest technological know-how, and improving upon the administrative skills. Apart from this, 33 judges were imparted training in application of scientific methods of judging by the academy. The training also included the exercise of simulated judgement writing.

In order to deal with the juvenile cases with sensitivity, another set of 40 judicial officers from across the country were trained on how the issues relating to children’s problems should be tackled, especially with regard to children caught in a criminal act at a tender age.

The judicial officers were made aware of the drastic changes made in the Juvenile Justice Act between 1986 and 2006. Besides, 34 judicial officers were called by the NJA to participate in a special programme on environmental issues. They were exposed to the conflicting themes of environment and development and the legal strategies needed to be adopted to tackle them when the judiciary is called upon to adjudicate upon such conflicts.